Fingering My Ghost Beads
Final Instructions

Fingering My Ghost Beads

The juniper berries are nibbled by squirrels then strung onto jewelry wire for me to finger, to ward off the skin walker who's stalking me. Last time he posed as an owl and snatched my sweet bantam chick. This time his presence is much stronger.

I squeeze the beads and curse him, the gall of him, but the god of ill winds coats my throat with dust, prevents the curse from taking shape.

He traps me in his wolf embrace, whispers hunger into my ear, and I am smitten. When he says he must get deeper, under my skin, just twist my pen-stroked veins into a new tale, I tell him to please, uncloak me.

Final Instructions

Gooseberry Falls,
Minnesota – before
Memorial Day.
when the runoff
flow is strongest;
when all the rivers
of the muskeg
hunger to merge
with Lake Superior;
when the falls
become tea-stained
and alive with decay.

Take my ashes then.

Let them dust
the wild strawberry
blossoms, smudge
the marsh marigolds;
let them seek
their own kind
in the burnt branches
of jack pines.
And let me fall back
from culture into nature,
divested,
denied the language
of gravestone
and the sign of the cross

Maureen Kingston lives and works in eastern Nebraska. Her poems are forthcoming in the Blue Collar Review, Blue Earth Review, Boston Literary Magazine, Breadcrumb Scabs, Foliate Oak, Grey Sparrow Journal, Halfway Down the Stairs, Hobble Creek Review, Pemmican, Rose & Thorn Journal, San Pedro River Review, Tipton Poetry Journal, and WestWard Quarterly. http://mockingbird.creighton.edu/ncw/kingstonbib.htm